From: Hillicon Valley/The Hill’s Technology Blog
By Jennifer Martinez
A cybersecurity bill that received pushback from privacy advocates and the White House last year will be re-introduced on Wednesday, setting up a potential battle between Congress and the administration over cybersecurity legislation.
House Intelligence Committee leaders Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.) will re-introduce their Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and hold a public hearing analyzing the current state of cyber threat information sharing between the U.S. government and industry next week.
The bill aims to thwart cyberattacks by making it easier for private companies to share information about cyberthreats and malicious source code with the intelligence community and the Department of Homeland Security.
The same privacy and civil liberties groups that fought against CISPA last year say they plan to revive their efforts to rally opposition against the bill—especially since it will be identical to the measure that passed the House last spring.
“The Internet activists who vociferously opposed CISPA last year are certainly primed to oppose the same bill again this year,” said Greg Nojeim, director of the Center for Democracy and Technology’s project on freedom, security and technology. “It’s hard to understand why members would want to start with the same legislation that raised such uproar.”
Last year, privacy advocates argued that the bill would increase the pool of people’s electronic communications flowing to the military and the secretive National Security Agency (NSA). They also argued that it would embolden the NSA to use data from people’s electronic communications for non-cybersecurity purposes.
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